SUMMEEED AND WINTERED IT. 229 



The following essay was then submitted upon 



AGRICULTURE AS A LIFE WORK. 



The opinions of mankind at large concerning agriculture, 

 are exceedingly diverse and contradictory. Scarcely two 

 men out of a score, taken from the various ranks and pursuits 

 of life, will agree as to its value. Up to a certain point, 

 indeed, there is no diversity of opinion. As a calling of 

 absolute necessity, vitally fundamental to all other industries, 

 and in itself the immediate means of support to a large pro- 

 portion of the human race, its importance is self-evident, and 

 cannot be ignored. But when we go higher, and drop the 

 jreneral irood to consider the individual; Avhen we ask what 

 agriculture demands of the man, and what it has to give him, 

 and seek to compare its aims and rewards with the aims and 

 rewards of other vocations in life, we shall find any assertion 

 of its higher claims met with all shades of incredulity, denial, 

 and even ridicule. We who know agriculture as a life work, 

 experimentally, having summered and wintered upon the 

 farm, ought to be able to help to find out and to establish 

 what is the just estimation in which our calling should be 

 held. 



In our busy, new country, with its boundless work waiting 

 to be done, the popular type of man has always been the man 

 of afiiiirs, an active man in some sphere. There is scarcely 

 room, with all our broad land, for men to live studious 

 and contemplative lives. The age and the public demand 

 results, and have not much respect for anything that is not 

 tangible and positive. 



The " merchant prince " has been a great favorite with the 

 American public. A great merchant, a man of comprehensive 

 plans and executive force, having in hand large schemes of 

 profitable enterprise, and bringing them to successful issue, 

 commands fortune, with all its seductive luxuries and positive 

 power ; and to many, especially to many an eager lad, this 

 material success seems worth all that it costs — a life ; and 

 the cost is not one life alone. To the intense strain upon 

 mind and body, the anxieties, the self-denials (denials too 

 often of one's best self) , the hardening and sharpening of the 

 whole nature, bent to one set of faculties, — one line of acute 



